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Exclusive: Catherine Hardwicke Attached to Dot War

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (5)

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Catherine Hardwicke, despite an impressive resume that includes Lords of Dogtown and Thirteen, and who may be the fourth best female director in Hollywood (I place her behind Kathryn Bigelow, Nicole Holofcener, and Sofia Coppola) will nevertheless continue to be most associated with Twilight, at least until she gets another picture off the ground. We reported earlier this year (and the L.A. Times confirmed) that she was attached to direct If I Stay, possibly with Dakota Fanning. But she punted that one in favor of a gothic take on the Red Riding Hood called The Girl With the Red Riding Hood, which has Amanda Seyfried possibly in the lead.

She’s attached to a couple of other projects, including another version of Hamlet, but beyond The Girl With the Red Riding Hood — which is out to cast — she doesn’t have anything greenlit. We learned from The Hollywood Cog, however, that Hardwicke does have her eye on another project, one that hardly fits her M.O., although given her track record so far, it’s hard to pin an M.O. on her.

The movie she’s possibly lined up for is called Dot War, an action-adventure movie being set up over at Paramount Pictures. Michael London (Sideways, Milk) is producing. The project is being described as War Games meets Real Genius, and it’s about a video-game programmer who is trained by the government to fight terrorist using virtual technology (sounds like a definite 3D possibility).

Real Genius meets War Games? I suppose it is better than remaking either one (although, a remake of the latter is in development).

The script the project is based on is an old one written by Laura Harrington; it’s been stalled for quite some time. It’s currently out for a rewrite. Hardwicke’s participation, obviously, is contingent on how good that rewrite will ultimately be.









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Comments

Completely off-topic:
How's the EE coming along?

Posted by: Jim Doggie at March 3, 2010 4:36 PM

There's a re-make of War Games in development? Oh good Lord. Why?

I've always wanted to "live-blog" watching that movie and criticizing all the many dozens of logical problems in it. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie. But the errors they made are so egregious and obvious now (what? 25 years later) that it almost seems like fantasy more than a realistic work of fiction, as it did when it came out.

In other words, that movie aged BADLY. But how could it not have?

I just re-watched Real Genius the other night for the first time in several years and even though all the hyperventilating over a laser beam is silly now, it's still a fairly good movie. I think that one aged better and that surprises me.

Um, anyway, I'll stop being a total nerd now.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at March 3, 2010 5:33 PM

I just realised I do not own Real Genius on DVD. Somewhere, my life went horribly off the rails. I don't even know how I can face my reflection every morning.

I do own War Games, though. I found it for $2 once at Half Price Books. I feel like I was overcharged, but I have a lot of inexplicable fondness for that piece of shit movie. That and The Manhattan Project, which is the one with John Lithgow and the kid who stole some plutonium and built a nuclear bomb for a science fair and his girlfriend was played by Cynthia Nixon (back when she still had blonde hair and wasn't a lesbian yet).

And speaking of Matthew Broderick and movies with "project" in the title, you know what else I don't own on DVD? Project X. Poor Goliath, all he wanted was a goddamn cigarette, but he ended up with a microwaved brain. Helen Hunt was in Project X, too. She was the doctor who taught Virgil sign language and it was totally her fault that he was so weirdly obsessed with apples.

You know what else Helen Hunt was in during the 80s? The choreographic masterpiece Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Remember that striped yellow backless shirt she wore to the audition? With a had that had a giant grasshopper on it or some damn thing? Good times, man. Shannen Doherty was also in that movie. This was after she played Stuttering Jenny on "Little House" but before she was on "Our House" (girlfriend had a serious thing for real estate).

I gotta go. I got some movies to buy.

Posted by: Sarina at March 3, 2010 6:47 PM

Yeah, you're on your own with Helen Hunt. CANNOT stand her.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at March 4, 2010 12:13 PM

Oh, I hate her, too. I just like that they made her play the lunatic in the funny clothes in a movie co-starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and then she "upgraded" to apes that smoked and talked incessantly about apples.

Posted by: Sarina at March 4, 2010 4:04 PM